Month: August 2013

Three sentence movie reviews: Bernie

This was a fun, funny, well-acted film that you should see because all the main actors are clearly having so much fun.  But my favorite part was the way the people in the town told the story of poor Bernie and that horrid Marjorie Nugent.  After the movie is done, you can watch the great DVD extras of the locals telling town stories and how Richard Linklater was interested in the story very early on.

Also!  Jack Black in a scene from my very favorite stage musical!

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: Tiny ruffles are hard on the hands. Also, getting bias tape right.

Here they are, three sets of sleeve ruffles, nearly ready to ruffle.
 
And here I am ruffling them.  My fingers ached from all the pulling of bobbin threads.  I do a lot with my hands and they are pretty strong and don’t usually bother me, but something about the pinching and pulling really took its toll.  But there’s no crying in sewing.  (That’s a completely untrue statement.  There is often a fair amount of crying in sewing, especially when you finish a dress and decide the collar is horrid.  Just to take one random example.)
 
Attempt #3 at continuous bias tape was more successful with this tutorial.  The part that helped me the most is in the picture on the screen.  No Big Dill suggests actually numbering your lines so you can match things up and that worked wonders for me.
 
Cutting the continuous bias tape. Very satisfying.
 

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: The day of French Seams. Also, wrong orientation for bias tape.

French seams are awesome.  They neatly encase the raw edge of your fabric in a tube that is part of the fabric and would otherwise just be hanging out, needing finishing.  To make them you sew the seam with the wrong sides together (it feels so wrong, but it’s right), trim said seam, press open (and then over, if you are anal like me) and then pin the right sides together and sew the same seam again, then press again.  Here is a tutorial if you are interested.

If you followed all that, you have just realized that each seam of my three shirts needs to be stitched twice, trimmed once, and pressed twice.  There are seven seams per shirt (two neck, one back, two sides, and two sleeves) and three shirts so that makes 21 seams total which means 42 seams, 21 trims, and 42 pressing sessions.  All that is to say that all I did today was sew french seams until my eyes crossed.  Holy cow.

Here’s an example of the back.
 

The shoulder.
 
And the sleeve.  Still, they look pretty, don’t they?  And they are strong too, which is good for a work shirt.
 
To give myself a break, I started to make bias tape.  Here’s my fabric.
 
And here’s my joined triangle.
 
And here is me realizing that I have the angles wrong.  Blast!
This image comes from Colette Pattern’s book on the Laurel Variations, which is free to download and where I learned about the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel.
 
To cheer myself, I cut out the fabric for the tiny ruffles.
 

Three sentence movie reviews: The Way Way Back

I saw this movie for Sam Rockwell and loved him, but overall I was not enamored.  I found the storytelling a bit lazy (Really?  Two overheard/random discoveries by the main character at just the right time?) and also I didn’t buy the fact that Steve Carell’s character could be that much of a jerk to the kid and his mom would put up with it.  That said, it’s not a bad movie, and it’s full of a stellar cast, so there are worse ways you could spend your time.*

*Also:  one of my favorite things about the movie was that–with one exception–I felt that both the teenage girls and women acting in this movie had normal bodies.  The lack of overly-starved and unnatural skinny Minnies was quite refreshing.

Colette Patterns’ Laurel: Cutting out the shirts, adding neck facings.

All the fitting that is going to be done has been done.  So now it’s time to cut.  As you can see, my helper arrived right on schedule.  Unfortunately, he decided the best way to “help” would be to race around on top of the fabric.  This resulted in the helper being shut in the bedroom for a while.
 
Shirt pieces were cut.  And cut again.  And again.  It’s at this point that I think to myself, “If I was only making one of these shirts, I would be done by now.”  I’m sure that will not be the last time I have that thought.
 
Prepping the neckline for facings.
 
I used the tutorial from Gertie.
 
Shirts with neck facings.

Important note from the future:  For those of us making the tiny ruffle variation of the Laurel, I think the organza is overkill for the stay stitching.  There’s going to be a ruffle and bias tape there, no need to add the organza too.  Skip this step if you haven’t already done it.  Just do the stay stitching.  I’m guessing that’s all you need.